Install Residue (leftover folders)

Install Residue (called Clean Uninstall in older versions) hunts down the folders that apps leave behind in AppData after you uninstall them — the settings, caches and state that the uninstaller didn't remove and that just sit there taking up space. It's built to be cautious: nothing is ever auto-selected, a strict denylist protects your important data, and everything you wipe goes to the Recycle Bin, never a permanent delete.

How it finds leftovers

The scan works by elimination. It builds a whitelist of everything currently installed — from Add/Remove Programs across all hives, running processes, Program Files, the Start Menu and AppX packages — then walks your Roaming, Local, LocalLow (and optionally ProgramData) folders. Any folder that isn't owned by an installed app, isn't on the protected denylist, and shows real staleness becomes a leftover candidate. For each one it measures size and the newest file inside to judge how abandoned it looks.

Confidence is a hint, not a verdict

Each candidate gets a confidence label for display only:

• High — no activity in over 180 days and larger than 5 MB. Looks genuinely abandoned.
• Medium — no activity in over 90 days and a meaningful size.
• Low — older than 30 days but small, or recently modified (likely still in use — review carefully).

Attribution is heuristic. A "stale, large, unrecognized" folder can still belong to a rarely-used installed app — a seasonal game, an archived config, a tool you run twice a year. That's exactly why the confidence score never selects anything for you.

What's protected and never flagged

A hard denylist keeps irreplaceable and system data off the list entirely, regardless of age or size:

• Windows and Microsoft system folders, Edge, Defender, .NET/CLR, caches and package stores.
• Shared hardware runtimes — NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Realtek (many apps depend on these).
• Browsers — Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and friends (precious profile data).
• Cloud sync roots — OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, iCloud, MEGA.
• Credential, key, wallet and 2FA stores — SSH, GnuPG, KeePass, Bitwarden, 1Password, Authy, crypto wallets (MetaMask, Exodus, Electrum) — irreplaceable, never flagged.
• Developer state — AWS, Azure, kube, Docker, Gradle, NuGet, VS Code, and BRUTAL's own folder.

Reparse points (junctions/symlinks) are also never flagged, so wiping one can't redirect to or orphan a real target elsewhere.

How to clean up leftovers

1. Open Install Residue from the PC Optimizer sidebar.
2. Click Scan. Optionally include ProgramData for machine-wide leftovers. Results are sorted High-confidence and largest first.
3. Review each candidate — its inferred app, size, last-modified date and the reason for its confidence label.
4. Tick only the folders you're confident are leftovers from apps you no longer use.
5. Click to wipe. Each selected folder is moved to the Recycle Bin, and the log reports how many moved and how much space that reclaims.

Common issues / troubleshooting

• A folder I expected isn't listed — it's probably owned by an installed app (kept as live data), on the protected denylist, or too new to look abandoned.
• "Could not remove (in use or protected)" — a file inside is open, or the folder became protected between scan and wipe. Close the related app and rescan.
• I removed something I needed — restore it from the Recycle Bin; nothing here is permanently deleted by BRUTAL.
• Want machine-wide leftovers — enable the ProgramData option before scanning.

For caches and temp files (not app leftovers), use the Disk Cleaner; to see what's eating your space overall, run the Disk Analyzer.